


Safe

by Cr1mson5theStranger



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Amputation, Blood, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Gen, Heroin, Major Character Injury, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Suicide Attempt, Tadashi Lives, and there's a lot of family tension, but i promise it will end well, crossposted to tumblr, i'm so sorry but i'm really not, this gets fucked up at parts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-03-19 04:46:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3596883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cr1mson5theStranger/pseuds/Cr1mson5theStranger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sharp point of pain materialized on his right shin and then expanded, driving through his leg like a railroad spike and forcing an agonized cry from his raw throat, and his vision turned black.</p><p>(Or, Callaghan saved Tadashi from the fire, at the cost of quite a bit to the younger man.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rebar

**Author's Note:**

> An expansion and continuation of the "Safe" drabbles appearing in my work "Cr1mson's BH6 Drabbles". Please know before reading this that this is a very dark story. It will eventually lighten up, but not for a long while.

Hell was real, and Tadashi was standing in it.

The inferno blazed all around him, smoke hanging thick and heavy in the air to constrict his throat and choke his every breath. He shrugged his blazer off and balled it up in his hands, pressing it against his face to shield himself from the ash and soot kicked up by his shoes as he darted around the rapidly-accumulating debris on the ground. Shadows stretched menacingly along the walls as the heat seared at his sweat-drenched skin. Rafters overhead creaked treacherously, concrete support pillars on every side cracking. He didn’t have much time—if he had any time at all.

The sooty air and dense smoke irritated his eyes, and Tadashi blinked hard to clear the water welling up in them. He pushed an abandoned display table, turned onto its side in the initial confusion of the blaze, out of his path and halted briefly. There, down near the main stage, was a familiar figure and a swarm of gleaming black, almost insectoid microbots curling around him.

Tadashi tried to call out once but gagged on smoke, sputtering and coughing. He shook his head once, fiercely, and tried again. “Professor Callaghan!”

The professor, nearly encased in a sphere of microbots, whirled suddenly, the technology around him shuddering in response to his startle. “Tadashi, above you!” the man called back.

A loud groaning following by a splintering of wood sounded overhead, and Tadashi dropped his blazer and leapt backward as a broken rafter beam came crashing to the ground in the place where he had been standing only moments prior. Tadashi braced his hands on the wood and vaulted over it, yelling, “Professor, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, just hurry!”

The snaking metal rack from which the lights around the stage were suspended broke from its flimsy support wires, collapsing to the ground around them. Tadashi bid his body run faster even as the metal structure scattered pieces of an already-crumbled support pillar into his path.  _Oh, no,_  he thought. Callaghan extended a hand toward him, and coiling tendrils of microbots surged forward to grip his arms and pull him down to the ground as an explosion tore through the building behind him.

There was a moment when everything seemed to come to him in hyper-definition. His face, soot-streaked and sweaty and terrified, was reflected in the shards of glass that rained down around him, and in the same glass he caught a glimpse of towering flames and plumes of smoke. The microbots were sliding together across his back and head to shield him from the chunks of debris flying through the air. Intense heat licked outward at him, a threatening reminder of the imminent danger beyond his view. A sharp point of pain materialized on his right shin and then expanded, driving through his leg like a railroad spike and forcing an agonized cry from his raw throat, and his vision turned black.

Tadashi didn’t remember much of anything after that.

* * *

It was dark, dank, and cold. It smelled like sewage and stagnant water. He was mostly horizontal on what seemed like waves, but the rolling at his back was sharp-edged and solid. His head lolled back, mouth open and dry tongue swollen, and a calloused hand supported it until more of the solid wave rushed up to take the hand’s place. Pain gripped his right leg below the knee and he arched his back, the last of his strength leaving him with his breath. A deep, rumbling voice followed him down into the dark.

“It’s alright, Tadashi. I’ve got you.”

* * *

The time that passed until cool air breathed over his skin again, chilling the sweat that still lingered there and sending a stinging shudder through his frame, was but a moment in darkness to him.

* * *

It was a pair of tense, strong arms that deposited him onto a plush surface and positioned his head on a downy pillow. It smelled like stale aftershave and salt, and Tadashi wrinkled his nose. A large hand pressed to his forehead briefly before withdrawing and allowing the air to touch him once more.

“I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

* * *

In the Gulf War, Callaghan had buddied up with his unit’s medic from the start and gleaned quite a bit of knowledge from him—enough that, when the medic was shot in the arm, Callaghan had been able to help his friend the same way he had been helped when a bullet shattered his leg. He had been in his twenties then, with better eyesight and fewer traumatic memories taking up space in his brain. But the basics had stuck with him through the years, thanks to Strauss’s ever-running mouth, and he had always hoped he would never need it.

 _Looks like I’m going to need it,_  he thought grimly, gazing at the bloodied young man lying motionless in his bed. Callaghan grimaced when his eyes caught the steel rebar jutting from Tadashi’s right shin. This would be messy.

Shaking his head, the older man turned from the bedroom door and went to the bathroom, rummaging through the cabinets at a forcibly steady pace. If his hands shook when he reached out for the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, he paid no mind to them. _Stupid,_  his mind hissed,  _stupid of him to run in after me._  But there was nothing he could do now; the deed was done, and the only reward Tadashi had gotten for his bravery was a rebar through the leg. And now, Callaghan was pulling out his first aid kit, checking for the needle and thread in it, and recalling the field dressings he’d learned in the war.

He’d kept the needle and thread in the first aid kit after a particularly eventful summer as the single father of one  _incredibly_  reckless nine-year-old girl. Abigail had gotten more adventurous than usual, decided that jumping out of the tree in the backyard was the best idea she’d ever had. He’d been constructing a new swing set in the backyard and had taken a bathroom break when it happened. One emergency room trip and medical bill for several thousand dollars later, Callaghan learned that it was best to keep more emergency supplies around, in case his daughter planned on getting more nails stuck in her feet.

“Kids today,” Callaghan whispered wryly, setting the open first aid kit down on the bedside table. “You never learn.”

He eyed the bloody base of the rebar for a moment before rolling up his sleeves and heaving a sigh. “Let’s get to work, Mr. Hamada.”


	2. Sutures

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains blood and detailed descriptions of an inexperienced person performing what's probably considered minor surgery. Reader discretion is advised.

Callaghan had been a precocious child, had gotten his doctorate at a younger age than most, had been almost single-handedly responsible for numerous innovations in robotics, and had published multiple books, scientific journals, and articles on the nature of his inventions and findings. He was not by any stretch of the imagination an unintelligent man.

So, of course, he knew before he even began that the process would be painful.

Callaghan stood in the living room, gazing warily between the discarded neural transmitter on the couch and the heaps of inert microbots scattered over the floor. There was a risk that using them could injure Tadashi even more, but there was an even higher risk that the young man would injure himself more when the pain became intense. Weighing his options carefully, Callaghan decided that the route of lesser evil was the most beneficial, and so he snatched up the transmitter and slid it onto his head without another minute wasted.

The initial moments were jarring. A jab of pain erupted behind Callaghan’s right eye, making the muscles around it spasm. There was a fleeting moment where his senses extended through the swarm of microbots jittering to life before returning to him. He sucked in a deep breath, hoping that it was only a temporary effect, and turned on his heel to stride back to the master bedroom, the microbots rolling along closely behind him.

Tadashi was still unconscious, lying prone on the bed. His skin was chapped and irritated, portions of it inflamed and peeling with more severe burns attained during their labored escape from the rubble. Callaghan sighed. “Apologies in advance,” he muttered.

Microbots crept up over the sides of the bed and hooked around Tadashi’s wrists and ankles, one solid row of them forming across his midsection. Callaghan stood over him with scissors borrowed from the kitchen, carefully cutting away the dark denim of his pant leg and tossing it aside. He set the scissors down beside the first aid kit and turned back to brace his hands on the grimy, notched metal of the rebar, fingers fluttering nervously. He inhaled deeply, counted to three, and gave a firm upward tug.

The rebar jerked free from the damaged flesh with a sickening squelch, and Tadashi jolted awake instantly, a scream of agony burbling from his lips. Callaghan startled, dropping the twisted metal, and the microbots scattered to the far edges of the room. Tadashi was left writhing on the bed. Callaghan rushed forward, foot smarting where the rebar had fallen on it, and gripped the young man’s wrists, mentally begging the microbots to return to their former positions. “Tadashi!” he called sharply. “Tadashi, listen to me! Stay calm!”

The microbots surged back to the bed, resuming their hold on Tadashi’s wrists and ankles and extending back over his torso. “P-please,” he whimpered. “Please…”

Callaghan picked up the bottle of hydrogen peroxide and turned away from Tadashi’s pleading, tearful eyes. Another stream of microbots slid over the young man’s mouth. “I have to,” Callaghan whispered, uncapping the bottle.

He tipped the bottle over and poured a liberal amount of the liquid into the open wound on Tadashi’s leg. Tadashi stiffened and let loose another ragged howl, muffled by the microbots covering his mouth, and his limbs were restrained in their reflexive paroxysms by the microbots. Callaghan set the peroxide back on the bedside table and hurriedly unbuckled his belt, ripping it loose from his pants and looping it under Tadashi’s injured leg. He fastened it tightly around the wounded limb, directly below the knee, praying that it would make do as a tourniquet, at least for now.

Tadashi’s chest was heaving with labored breaths, a sound horrifically close to whining emanating from behind the gag of microbots. Something like pride flashed through Callaghan’s mind; he was somehow, miraculously, still conscious in spite of the ordeal. Callaghan reached for the needle, thread, and scissors in the first aid kit and thought he heard Tadashi’s whines increase in volume when the objects passed through the young man’s line of sight. Callaghan paid as little heed as he could. He threaded the needle, snipped off a length of thread, knotted the end, and steeled himself. “It’s almost over,” he said, without knowing whether the reassurance was for Tadashi or for him.

He worked as deftly as he could while still maintaining the necessary amount of caution. The microbots tightened their hold on Tadashi when he began to thrash again, crying out in protest and pain, and Callaghan focused intently on the needle as it punctured the flesh, on the thread as it pulled taut below and above and tightly sutured the injury closed. He tied the thread close to the skin and cut the excess away.

Callaghan paused only briefly. A quick glance at Tadashi found that the young man’s body had sagged against the mattress, his eyes half-lidded and his skin dotted with droplets of sweat. His fingers were curled limply inward toward his palms, the rise and fall of his chest a shuddering, nearly convulsive motion. Callaghan swallowed hard. “Almost over,” he repeated in a strained voice.

The microbots slowly levered Tadashi’s leg upward until it was a full forty-five degrees off the bed. Tadashi moaned, hands clenching into fists, but otherwise remained still. Callaghan repeated the suturing process on the exit wound, cursing when the blood and peroxide soaking his fingertips made the needle slip from his grasp. At long last, he was finished, and he placed the needle, thread, and scissors on the bedside table, soaked a small length of gauze in peroxide, and wiped off the fresh sutures.

Tadashi was unconscious again. The microbots withdrew from their restraining positions, gliding easily under the still body and hoisting it up into the air. Callaghan made his way cautiously to the bedroom down the hall with the microbots and their precious burden trailing behind. The room had been Abigail’s when she was younger. A hodgepodge of memories from her too-short life was collected there and left untouched since he’d lost her. As a temporary place to rest and heal, it would be more than adequate.

The microbots laid Tadashi gently onto the bed. Callaghan swept a quilt off the baseboard and spread it over the young man, smoothing down the edges. He stood back, hands on his hips, and sighed before leaving the room, shutting off the light on his way out.

As he crossed back through the hallway, Callaghan tugged the transmitter off his head, letting the microbots fall inert to the ground and spill across the floor around him. He rubbed at the indents on his forehead where the transmitter had rubbed the skin raw and set it on his dresser the moment he crossed the threshold of the master bedroom. Tadashi would likely be unconscious a while, and nobody would come to sort out the estate until after a thorough search of the exhibition hall debris had been conducted. He had time. So, he gathered up the bloodied, soiled bed sheets and carried them to the utility room to put on a load of laundry.

* * *

 

All Tadashi could remember when he awoke was pain. He had the vague feeling of missing something, and his right leg throbbed with each pulse of blood that surged through his veins. He tried to sit up and found that his abdomen clenched and shuddered, so he rested back on the firm mattress beneath him and the downy pillow under his head.

He blinked up through the darkness at the indistinct shapes above him. He squinted, blinked harder, forced his vision to focus, and realized that he was staring up at glow-in-the-dark space stickers on a ceiling. Cartoonish stars mingled with astrologically correct galaxies and nebulas, swirling in a huge circle over his head. He smiled lazily, beginning to drift again.

The thought that the stickers weren’t the same as the ones in his own bedroom had barely crossed his mind before he was asleep.


	3. In Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long update. This chapter's a little slower, but it's Hiro's introduction into the story. I promise Chapter 4 won't take so long.

Three days ago, the exhibition hall of San Fransokyo Institute of Technology burned to the ground. Three days ago, Hiro Hamada’s entire world quite literally crashed and burned.

He had slept some since then. It hadn’t been much, and it hadn’t been willing, but he had slept. His closed eyelids only played back the dancing flames and the columns of smoke, the soaring embers and sparks spat from the inferno. Then he had blinked, realized he was awake, and knew it was all over. His dreams, his future, his family—they were all shattered.

Hiro scratched absently, weakly, at the bandages wrapped around his head. The doctors told him that the impact with the pavement had split a gash into the back of his head and concussed him. He had explicit instructions to be very careful; he hadn’t needed stitches, but it was scabbing over and tugging at his scalp uncomfortably, matting his hair into a knot. He was to rest as much as possible, to help his brain heal from being thrown rather unceremoniously against his skull.

But Hiro couldn’t rest, not when he kept seeing the fire that had sealed his brother’s fate every time he shut his eyes. Excepting the couple hours he spent unconscious after the explosion slammed his head into the road, he hadn’t slept at all.

One moment replayed in Hiro’s mind as he lay awake, staring up at his ceiling and shivering under the pile of blankets draped over him, and he wiped compulsively at the tears welling up in his eyes.

_“When are you going to start doing something with that big brain of yours?”_

_“What, go to college like_ you _, so people can tell me stuff I already know?”_

He wished he had learned to appreciate that nagging voice before it was silenced.

* * *

Snatches of memories came to Tadashi through the daze of the ever-growing pain. He stirred uncomfortably beneath the covers, grunting as his right leg protested the movement. Heat clung in thick layers to his flesh, the blanket scraped roughly against something that protruded from his leg, and he wished that Aunt Cass could be there.

Hell, he would even take Hiro’s Saturday morning pouncing and screaming. Having an overly energetic barely-fourteen-year-old jumping up and down mercilessly on his stomach and chest was better than having heavy silence around him.

 _Hiro_ … The name filled Tadashi’s sluggish mind, and he sighed. He missed the little squirrel. There was a brief instance where he wondered if Hiro wasn’t jumping on him because he was sick, and Aunt Cass had set down one of her signature Upper Room Right Side Quarantines. But Tadashi missed Hiro, and if Hiro was there, he wouldn’t miss him, would he? Tadashi wouldn’t miss Hiro if he was there.

Of course, Hiro was always right there, wherever Tadashi was, even when he didn’t want to be. It had always seemed to be their specialty, finding each other. After their parents died, Tadashi had found comfort in his hovering over Hiro. His little brother couldn’t slip between his fingers if he never left Tadashi’s sight. Tadashi would be lying if he said that all those times were convenient, though, or comfortable.

_The police officer clicks handcuffs around Tadashi’s wrists and pushes him down into the back of the car by the head. Hiro follows closely behind, smiling nervously at him. Tadashi has only narrowed eyes for his brother in response._

Tadashi never thought he would wish he’d enjoyed that moment.

* * *

An hour turned into a day turned into a week before Hiro noticed it. Time’s passage registered to him as nothing more than the accumulation of dust on a bookshelf—gradual and unnoticeable, quietly building without fanfare until examined. He lay on his right side, curled in his bed, refusing to roll over or to acknowledge the plates of food set out for him on the desk and the bedside table.

Tadashi’s friends tracked in and out of the room, their heavy and somewhat uneven steps indicating their purpose. They were bringing in the boxes that had once been Tadashi’s lab at SFIT, depositing them on the opposite side of the room to be sorted through at a later date. Hiro squeezed his eyes more tightly shut and feigned sleep whenever they were there. He didn’t want to face them, couldn’t bear to look at these people who had been nice to him for his brother’s sake.

 _“They’re_ your _friends, nii-san, not mine.” Hiro flops grumpily into his chair to punctuate the statement. “They’re just nice to me because you want them to be. It doesn’t mean they like me.”_

_“Have faith in them, Hiro,” Tadashi urges. “They really do like you. Honey Lemon thinks you’re adorable.”_

_Hiro snorts. “Honey Lemon is nice to everyone.”_

It was too much. It was far too much for him to handle. He wanted no one’s forced smiles and false sympathy. Of course they were grieving for Tadashi; everyone who had known him was. But they weren’t grieving with Hiro. They were mourning on their own time, in their own ways, and he would only be a burden to them. He couldn’t rely on the support of people who were acting as though they could stand him just so he wouldn’t break.

And besides, they weren’t his friends, anyway.

* * *

It was always dark when Tadashi woke, and so he never really knew if it was daytime with pulled curtains or nighttime without a moon. It never seemed to matter, though, between the worsening agony gripping his right leg and the rough, dry hands that made their tentative ministrations.

Currently, the hands in question were ringing out a rag into a basin somewhere on his left and dabbing at the site of the pain in his leg carefully with the dampened cloth. The sensation on his skin was pins and needles and a prickling sort of sting, like walking on a foot that’s fallen asleep. Tadashi kept his eyes closed, lacking the energy to pry them open and take in the world. There was soft breathing beside him—his helper—and a cool breeze on his bared legs. The realization that he was missing his pants probably should have been more disquieting to him, he thought, but it really was fine. His boxers were still there, and anyway, he felt safe enough.

Of course, he would’ve felt safer if he was able to figure out where he was. He shifted uncomfortably on the bed, hoping to satiate the heat complaints of his sweaty back and succeeding only in making them worse. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be so sick you could barely move. He would have to ask Hiro, later on when he was more capable of speech.

_“’m not sick,” Hiro grumbles, turning his head away from Tadashi’s cold rag. He would be pushing at his brother’s arms, except that he probably can’t even lift his own. “Just…gotta rest my eyes a minute. Get back to…the project.”_

_“Uh-huh,” Tadashi says, placating, mopping Hiro’s forehead with the wet rag and patting his hand. “You can get back to the project when you’re better.”_

Those were good moments, Tadashi thought to himself. They were nice things to have. He never realized how little he appreciated it, either, because it had always been that way for them. Tadashi and Hiro had always been there with each other, for each other. They had always given each other their time and effort. Tadashi had thought that was just how siblings were, but then again, maybe he was wrong. Maybe they were special. Honey Lemon’s older sister looked down her nose at her from across the globe, working for a business whose name Tadashi couldn’t even pronounce. Wasabi’s brother and sister fought over everything, even the time, leaving him to be the middleman. GoGo never spoke of or to her family at all. Fred didn’t even  _have_  siblings, just an empty house with too much room for a lanky nerd like him.

Tadashi’s shirt was tugged up over his head, his arms maneuvered out of the holes, and as the hem brushed his face, he felt something crusted drag over the tip of his nose.

* * *

Aunt Cass soothed Hiro’s nightmares, but not like Tadashi had.

It wasn’t that Aunt Cass couldn’t do it. It wasn’t even that it didn’t work. It was just that it wasn’t  _nii-san_  comforting him that made the comfort less viable. Hiro was uncertain how much of it to resent and how much of it to be grateful for. Twisted metal, shattered glass, and dancing flames taunted him in his dreams—or, rather, his nightmares. He had few good dreams anymore.

_“It’s alright, Hiro. It’s okay. I’m here, I’ve got you. Everything’s going to be alright, otouto. I promise.”_

Hiro…regretted. He regretted every poor choice he’d ever made, and if he could trade something for the opportunity to have Tadashi back—the bot-fights, the arguments, the snide comments—he would do it. He would give anything he needed to, even his own life. Tadashi hadn’t deserved to die like that, alone and in pain. Hiro would’ve traded anything to reverse it.

But that was the cruel irony, then, wasn’t it? The irony of regret? Hiro had nothing but his infinite list of bad decisions to his name, not a one of them made out of anything but selfishness. He had nothing worth trading for his brother’s life.

He wished he hadn’t made the microbots.

He wished he hadn’t done plenty of things.


	4. Lucidity

Callaghan tipped the bowl onto its side, watching the pinkish water pour down the kitchen sink. It had been three days already since the fire. No doubt his neighbors had heard the news by now. He would have to wane down on his usage of lights, water, and gas, to keep from drawing unwanted attention to the house. From now until Krei was brought to justice, he could afford no sloppy mistakes, no near misses.

But, he thought, frowning as he set the bowl in the dish drainer, there was the matter of moving Tadashi. He could afford no sloppy mistakes or near misses there, either. Being too careless would worsen the injury. Callaghan winced as an image of the rebar, twisted and bloody, protruding from mangled flesh, flashed through his mind. And he would need antibiotics—plenty of them.

Callaghan put his elbows on the countertop, resting his head in his hands.  _Stupid,_  his mind seethed again. Tadashi Hamada had a 214 IQ and yet had managed to prove himself the stupidest young man Callaghan had ever known. What could possibly possess a person to drive them to run into a raging fire for someone whom common sense would dictate was beyond a hopeless cause? Tadashi wasn’t a firefighter.

 _No, but perhaps he wanted to be,_  Callaghan mused, a wry snort escaping his nostrils. He had only been trying to help. How was he supposed to know he’d only be harming them both even more? He had only been trying to help.

They had that much in common, it seemed.

Callaghan stilled, straining his ears to hear into the other room. He thought he’d heard…there it was again, the light rustle of sheets, barely-audible grumbling. He sighed. There would be no easy way to handle it; things were  _never_  easy with a Hamada, apparently. But the situation had to addressed, and sooner rather than later. The last thing he needed was Tadashi getting ahead of himself, thinking he could walk, and worsening his injury.

No need to make things more difficult than they already were, after all.

Callaghan made his way quickly but quietly to Abigail’s old bedroom, stepping carefully over the microbots scattered along the floor. The grumblings grew in volume as he neared the doorway. Heavy dread sunk low in his stomach— _please, God, don’t let him have done something_ else  _stupid_ —and he swung the door open, catching a very shocked Tadashi in the middle of disentangling himself from the bed sheets.

* * *

Tadashi had awoken in pain.

It wasn’t the tolerable sort of pain that lapped out in waves from a central point and left time in which to recover. It was the sort of pain that assaulted every functioning nerve ending in a particular area of the body and ricocheted about the rest of the body in sporadic patterns that left almost no opportunity to prepare for the next throb. The pain was greatest in his right leg, below the knee, but his head, back, and pelvis all complained of some imaginary ailment, as well. Every muscle in his lower body cramped but all at alternating rates, leaving him curled in the fetal position on the mattress and wondering if he should just close his eyes again.

Tadashi was no idiot when it came to medical dilemmas. He had, after all, done thorough research in preparation for finalizing Baymax. So, it was with some level of certainty that he could gather that his current agony was neither healthy nor promising. And speaking of Baymax, where  _was_  that plush bot, anyway? He should have been vaulted into high alert by the sounds of intense distress Tadashi was certain he’d made the first time he tried to move. Yet there was no telltale squeaking of vinyl and creaking of floorboards, no soothing mechanical voice greeting him. Tadashi turned his head to search for Baymax’s charging station—he’d brought his invention home in light of Hiro’s many and colorful accidents while building the microbots—and sucked in a gasp at the sight of the unfamiliar bedroom.

Everything seemed to be thinly coated in dust, as though the room had not been lived in or used for some time. But there didn’t appear to be enough accumulated grime to signify that more than a few weeks had gone by since it was last attended to, though the framed pictures on the dresser seemed to him at least a few years old. There was a reading nook, complete with three overstocked bookshelves and a bean bag chair, and a desk on the opposite side, near the bed. A quilt constructed of various unrelated scraps of fabric was draped over him, vibrant green sheets tucked around the mattress beneath him. A shelf of stuffed animals and dolls arranged to have their arms around each other or in silly positions hung over the shortest of the bookshelves.

Tadashi swallowed, sandpaper scrape of dry muscle against dry muscle, to drive away the acrid fear coating the back of his throat. He brought a hand up to scratch at the itch that had sprung up on his neck and froze when his skin brushed flesh. He was in a strange room, in pain, and without his clothes.

Sternly, he commanded himself to breathe slowly, counting each inhale and exhale with beats tapped onto his stomach. His mind strained to recall something,  _anything_ , to explain his current situation. All that came to him was the fire, the knowledge that Callaghan was trapped, and the excruciating pain.  _Okay,_  he thought after a few minutes,  _I think I can panic now._

Tadashi pivoted on his rear, hissing at the darts of agony that fired through his injured leg with the motion. He would have to be careful. Cautiously, he eased himself upright and made to swing his legs over the side of the bed, but they tangled in the quilt, which was caught between the mattress and the wall. Tadashi grunted a curse and kicked out with his left leg in an effort to dislodge the offending hodgepodge of cloth. He was weaker than he thought, apparently, because his kicking only managed to budge the quilt a few centimeters. He cursed again and kicked more forcefully, determined to free himself.

The door was suddenly flung open, and Tadashi startled and went rigid. So did the man in the doorway, tall and broad with graying hair and serious blue eyes. Tadashi squinted at him. “Professor Callaghan?”

Callaghan sighed and leaned against the door, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Thank God,” he muttered. “I thought you were up to something _else_  criminally stupid.”

The backhanded insult rolled off Tadashi’s shoulders easily. He was far too busy staring at the man he’d thought as doomed as himself. Pieces of memory returned to him, of a sound like a thousand thunderclaps directly behind him, of microbots around his shoulders gripping him like vices, of Callaghan screaming his name. “We…where are we?” Tadashi rasped.

“We’re at my house.” Callaghan gestured at the room. “You’re in my daughter’s old room.”

Tadashi took another look around, taking in the details. He paused for a moment on the star stickers on the ceiling, above the bed, before shaking his head and looking back at Callaghan. “What happened? How did we end up here? Where are Hiro and—”

Callaghan held up his hands. “Whoa, slow down!” he cut in. “I’ll explain. Just don’t fire your questions at me quite that fast.” He made his way over to the bed and sat down gingerly beside Tadashi. “The exhibition hall exploded after you ran in. I brought us here with your brother’s microbots. Hiro and your friends are all fine; they were nowhere near the building when it went up. Your leg was…hurt, but not so badly that I couldn’t take care of it myself.”

At that, Tadashi peeled away the quilt with his hands and eyed his right leg. There was a light red film crusted over the skin and hair, purplish thread stained brown with blood weaving in and out of the flesh. Tadashi swayed for a moment before sucking in a deep breath and straightening. “We should go to a hospital,” he said firmly.

Callaghan shook his head. “We can’t.”

Tadashi pulled back in shock. “Why not?!”

“It’s…dangerous for the two of us to go out there right now. There are particular individuals who don’t need to know we made it out.”

Tadashi paled. “Krei?” he whispered.

Callaghan nodded. “He’s cut corners before, done all kinds of unsavory things to get what he wants. I can’t imagine what he’d do with those microbots if he had them—or with you, if he could get to you.”

“I don’t…I don’t know nearly as much about them as Hiro, they’re—they’re his project, and I—”

“It won’t matter to Krei. Whether it’s you or Hiro, he  _will_  find a way to get more microbots. And like it or not, you’re a direct line to your brother.” He placed a warm, strong hand on Tadashi’s shoulder in an almost paternal hold and gave it a small jostle. “I know you don’t like it, but we have to stay hidden for now. At least until I can find some way to keep us both safe and off of Krei’s radar. Fair enough?”

Tadashi hesitated for a moment, but soon nodded in assent. “What do we have to do?” he asked in a quiet, tremulous voice.

Callaghan glanced down at Tadashi’s wounded leg. “You need rest, but we can’t stay here forever. When we leave…I’ll have to move you.”


	5. Motion and Stillness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry this took a month and some to update. I had finals, graduation, and personal matters to attend to. This chapter's sort of a time-lapse so that we don't have to spend forever in a hell of menial moments that don't compare with everything that's going to happen. Enjoy!

Relocating turned out to be far more difficult than anticipated.

Tadashi’s leg was all but immobile, almost completely useless. Even if the pain hadn’t been nearly unbearable, Callaghan knew enough to guess that the numbness beginning somewhere below the sutures was a bad sign. If Tadashi couldn’t walk, Callaghan would have to do it for him. Considering the fact that a swarm of sleek, black microbots and their neural transmitter-fitted master surging through the streets of San Fransokyo wasn’t _quite_  conspicuous enough, they would have to make use of the sewers again to avoid being seen. And Tadashi could grumble all he wanted about needing to be carried; Callaghan saw no sense in trusting a wounded leg only a week after its injury.

“I just wish you’d tell me why we have to be so secretive about all of this,” Tadashi lamented as they were preparing to leave.

The night was only just beginning to take hold outside, the last traces of sunset staining Callaghan’s long, black trench coat with the dimmest of crimson lights. There was only the slightest pause before he continued packing clothes into his bag, saying over his shoulder, “They’ll be concluding the search of the rubble tonight. It won’t be much longer before they come here to start marking things for the estate sale, and we can’t be here when that happens. Safety first, and then I’ll tell you why. Fair enough?”

Tadashi huffed. “Not really, no.” But he argued the issue no further.

Callaghan set Tadashi’s bag—extra bags, extra weight, extra care to be taken—down on the young man’s lap and patted his shoulder momentarily, absently, before scooping up his own bag. There were relatively few changes of clothes for either of them. Clothes could be washed without expensive machinery, and the bags were mostly packed full of medical supplies, the outdated antibiotics and mild painkillers Callaghan had found in the medicine cabinets. It was nowhere close to enough to abate the growing healthcare crisis on their hands, or perhaps only mostly on Callaghan’s, but it would have to do. Until he could get Tadashi to a hospital without significant risk, it would have to do.

Callaghan slid the neural transmitter onto his head and gritted his teeth as his awareness flashed through thousands of tiny receptors before condensing back into his skull. His right eye twitched aggravatingly. “Alright, Mr. Hamada,” he said, voice picking up a warning tone, “brace yourself.”

Microbots coursed along the walls and floor, up over the bed, and under and around Tadashi’s legs, lifting him into the air. He winced and grunted in pain, clutching at his leg. Callaghan decided to pretend he hadn’t noticed. He couldn’t afford to stop  _every_ time Tadashi was in pain. He’d be stopping every five minutes if he did. No, he simply had to continue forward, always forward. There were things to be done.

* * *

There was a ticking clock on the wall. The hands were the arms of a robot from some dumb cartoon he used to watch as a child, but the necessity of having one arm shorter than the other made the fearsome fighting bot look lopsided. It had a voice box at some point in time, a small machine that croaked out each hour and a catch phrase from the show. Hiro had removed it as a child and stuffed it into one of his early bots—not built to fight, just to perform menial household tasks in ways that a seven-year-old Hiro no doubt thought were epic.

Now, though, it was nothing more than an ancient, battered clock on a wall in a half-empty room. Every tick sounded like a gunshot to Hiro’s ears, which had been made sensitive by the weighty silence of the last week of his life. He lay curled into the fetal position in his bed, forcing his eyes to remain closed in an effort to bid sleep to return to him.

“Hiro…?”

Hiro clenched a fist in the bedsheets at the sound of Aunt Cass’s voice above him. It was too soon, he thought, too soon to face the day. The time that had passed since the funeral—God, how he hated the word, the memory—was a mere blur to him.

Aunt Cass didn’t relent. “Hiro, honey…you have to get up and take a shower. It’s been four days.”

“I just want to stay here,” Hiro mumbled.

A sharp sigh pierced the air around him as he wrenched his eyes shut even tighter. There was a momentary pause. “You just have to take a shower,” Aunt Cass said, patience a bit forced. “Then you can come back here.”

Hiro weighed the merits of complying for a minute before slowly levering himself upright, pushing back the covers, and ambling into the bathroom. Aunt Cass passed a clean pair of underwear and pajamas through the door to him. He only had to take a shower, and then he could go back to bed. He didn’t have to face anything else today.

* * *

It had been difficult enough, losing her sister all those years ago. Cass had been…ill-equipped to deal with so much then. The majority of small businesses fail in the first five years, one of her college professors had smartly proclaimed—which was why the man had chosen to teach about business instead of running one. Cass fancied herself more attracted to risk, better-suited to a life full of adversity. She knew her strength and ability; she was confident that she could handle life’s many and varied curveballs.

Owning a business, advertising, gaining a regular clientele, it was far more difficult than the textbooks made it seem. For the first three years, Cass ate cheap noodles at almost every meal and cried like a child over the bills piling up on the kitchen table. Most mornings, she awoke with familiar despair lining her mouth and throat, and she had to wonder if the crazy dream she’d cooked up as a teenager would work out after all. Soon enough, though, the neighborhood book clubs and writers’ clubs began scouting for locations to hold their meetings, places with coffee and good food and plenty of space. The Lucky Cat Café—previously not so lucky for Cass—seemed the perfect location to them. And almost every one of them bought something while they were there.

The first night Cass was able to pay every bill and still have money left from the month’s profits to put into savings, a phone call came. It was eleven o’clock at night, her sister and brother-in-law were dead, and she had two terrified nephews to attend to. Life was pulling no punches yet.

Ten years and three months had passed. Parenthood was hard as hell, Cass had to admit, but she’d done the best she could. And she thought she’d done alright. Her boys had survived her parenting, so they could survive anything.

Anything but fire and idiotic, self-sacrificing heroism, that was.

She’d often heard it said that there was no pain greater than a parent outliving their child. She never dreamt she’d endure that pain, let alone its double blow of the surviving child’s grief. It seemed to her that there was a damn good reason the paper said Tadashi was survived by an aunt and fourteen-year-old brother. They weren’t alive, either of them; they were getting by as best they could, surviving day to day without the usual joyful thrill of life. Their joy was gone without hope of being brought back, without a chance that things could be the way they once were. The house was quiet and the café dark without Tadashi. Cass struggled enough to reconcile it—he was so young, so full of talent and promise and  _dreams_  that would never be realized—but there was no way she could afford to show it. Hiro hadn’t come down out of their—his room in a little over two weeks. Cass brought meals to him though he wouldn’t eat, bade him shower though he didn’t care to. She didn’t dare think what would happen if the loss of one of her boys caused the loss of the other. She hadn’t realized how many empty spaces had been in her world until she got them, and too many of those spaces had grown vacant once more.

Cass put on her strong face for Hiro and her business face for the Lucky Cat. Her pillow, Mochi’s fur, and endless boxes of tissues had caught enough tears. Tadashi was gone. It was an agonizing way to die, and he had only been twenty, and it was abhorrent. But it was over. It was dreadfully, decisively over, and she had to let it be such.

Still, she hoped it could be forgiven her that she broke down in tears when Mrs. Matsuda asked her how she was doing.

* * *

Callaghan had no illusions. He was fucked. He was in over his head. He was a mile under the ocean, gasping for breath and pushing back helplessly against the pressure. That was all he got for trying to do a heroic thing, it seemed. He only got trouble.

Tadashi’s leg looked…vile. Callaghan thought he’d cleaned the wound and the sutures well enough, but there had been a window of time for bacteria to attack the fresh wound site. He had taken too long getting back from the campus, had been too confident in his own half-baked ability to save the young man. It had been more than a little bit difficult to fight the panic welling up in him when he noticed the bright red, irritated flesh at the sutures, the first drops of yellowish-white pus leaking out. He was fucked. He was well and truly fucked.

But he also knew the neighborhood well enough. The warehouse was in the center of the rundown strip of buildings inhabited mostly by winos and addicts. This was the place where justice came to die, where a cop paid well enough would look the other way when a person broke the law. It used to be the most popular destination in the city for bot fights, but now housed only back-alley drug deals and baseball bat beatings. Abigail had taken the metro to the nearest stop and walked into these dark corners of San Fransokyo multiple times. And she’d won, too. Winning as a teenage kid among predatory men was not ideal. So Callaghan had made his own network of resources here long ago, whether that took bribery, threats, or common knowledge, and it was the third that reminded him of the clinic down the road.

The thought of stealing from a charity clinic made his stomach churn with a sickness he couldn’t quite name. But it had to be done. Tadashi would die otherwise, and Callaghan had no intentions of letting all the hard work of trying to save him go to waste.

On the way back to the warehouse, duffel bag of clinical antibiotics and painkillers slung across his back, Callaghan met up with the same grimy street dealer he remembered from all those years ago. The man still sniveled as much as he had back then, back when Abigail needed someone of that breed watching out for her. The deal had been simple: Callaghan let the man sell the drugs without reporting him or his bosses to the authorities in exchange for whatever favors Callaghan happened to need. What he needed now was only a precaution, he told himself, a last resort in case what he’d pilfered from the clinic proved unsatisfactory.

“I need some heroin.”

* * *

The days dragged by. The pain grew worse. Tadashi tried very hard to sleep through it, but he lost the fight every time. When Callaghan brought back a duffel bag full of medicine for his leg, Tadashi found that he didn’t have the energy to question it or to argue it. He simply downed the medicine, the maximum number for a day all in one dose, and lay back on the cot. No sense in looking a gift horse in the mouth, he thought. He was too grateful for the pain relievers to do that.

It was bright and noisy but warm within the cramped tarp cube set up around him. The low humming and buzzing of machinery around him was soothing, more like home than he had ever realized it could be. He could never sit up quite long enough to see what they were making, but it looked like more of Hiro’s microbots. The tiny robots glittered along the assembly line as they filed out past the tarp, out of his sight.

It was becoming more and more difficult to focus on things, but Tadashi’s eyes found Callaghan sitting beside one of the machines churning out microbots. Wasn’t that one of the replacements ordered for the labs at SFIT? How had it managed to end up here? Everyone thought they’d been lost…

“W-what…what do we need more microbots for?” Tadashi slurred.

Callaghan turned to face him with a tense smile that was likely meant to be comforting, but somehow inspired in Tadashi only apprehension. “We have to fight Krei, remember?” he asked. “He’s going to go after your brother, if he hasn’t already. We have to keep him away from Hiro.”

“Hiro…oh. Okay.”

The painkiller dragged him back below the tide of unconsciousness, and the whirring of busy machines followed him down.


	6. Accelerating

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the long and the short of the extremely long update time is this: I graduated high school, found out a month before my first semester started that I didn't actually have enough money to attend the college I'd enrolled in, had to change to online school, had to get my schedule redrafted after missing the financial aid deadline, got a job, quit the job, got another job, and had to try to wrestle crippling self-doubt over my writing (this story and an original piece in particular). So apologies, and updates will resume frequency.

Tadashi surfaced with a dim knowledge of the pain lapping at his body in waves, held back by a barrier that dulled his mind and made his confusion giddy. A chill surged through his veins, and he shivered, sluggishly tugging the thin blankets tighter about his body. He struggled to open his eyes, frowning when he found that his vision was blurred and indistinct. “Tha’s nah gud,” he slurred.

A deep voice, rich and rumbling, chuckled stiffly at his left. “No, Tadashi, it really isn’t.”

Something cold and damp dabbed at his forehead. Tadashi tried to pull away in irritation, but only managed a few feeble twitches of the head. Machinery hummed and whirred and clacked somewhere beyond him. Maybe Hiro was working on something new. He should get up and help him. Tadashi tried to sit up and immediately fell back onto the pillows again, convincing himself rather quickly that Hiro was a big boy and could deal without his dizzy older brother trying to peer over his shoulder.

But the voice there, soothing him, coaxing him to turn his head the other way and accept the ministrations of strong and calloused hands, it wasn’t Hiro’s voice. And it certainly wasn’t Aunt Cass’s voice, either. Panic crept through Tadashi far slower than it should have, and he raised his head as best he could on a sore and seemingly twig-like neck. “H-Hiro…where—w-where—?”

A face danced briefly before his clouded vision as the strong hands wrapped around one of his own, patting his limp hand comfortingly. “Safe,” the voice assured. “Go back to sleep.”

This person seemed to know what he was talking about—seemed so sure of everything and so in control—and Tadashi was grateful for not having to be in charge for once. With a sigh, he rested against the pillows once more and drifted.

* * *

 

It looked like a marshmallow, felt like a balloon, and sounded like HAL 9000. Hiro was desperately trying to be the precise opposite of comforted by all those things. It was a minimally successful endeavor, seeing as the stupid thing refused to leave him alone but it was the very last thing Tadashi ever made. It was the last thing Tadashi’s own hands had touched, crafted, molded lovingly into being. And he couldn’t bring himself to hate it because of that simple fact.

So he settled for being extremely exasperated with it.

Baymax was only trying to help. Hiro reminded himself incessantly of this fact as he skidded to a halt in front of the warehouse doors. Baymax was only trying to help him because, after all, Hiro was the idiot who asserted that finding out where the microbot supposedly led would “stabilize his pubescent mood swings”, or something to that effect. He had been more focused on repairing his ticket to a distraction from the numbing gloom that had settled heavy on him for three weeks than on the healthcare companion.

(Which was a dumbass name for a robot, in his opinion, but he’d let it slide.)

And honestly, Hiro had been convinced he was right that the microbot was broken. It was the only thing left of the exhibition display, and he was planning to have a grand time destroying it. Nothing could remain of that night. But as he turned the Petri dish, the microbot stayed its course, pounding uselessly against the side of the glass…toward the heavy warehouse doors. It was simply too tempting—a pure coincidence, Hiro was sure, but tempting nonetheless. The microbot was almost definitely broken, but there was no harm in checking inside.

“Locked,” Hiro huffed at the heavy padlock in his palm.

“There is a window,” Baymax reported, pointing up at an open window on the side of the warehouse.

Hiro worked his lower lip between his teeth thoughtfully. He shouldn’t. The padlock was a sign from the heavens, from—he shouldn’t.

“Come on, give me a boost.”

Hiro had already advanced a few steps toward the window when he realized Baymax was still standing at the door. “Climbing to the window is dangerous. You could be injured.”

Hiro rolled his eyes. “Well, you want my mood swings to be stabilized, right? Come give me a boost.” He started walking again, not waiting to see if Baymax followed, but soon heard the quiet squeak of vinyl rubbing vinyl as the robot shuffled along behind him.

Of course he would.

* * *

 

Callaghan frowned at the liquid bubbling in the spoon pressed between his fingers. The lighter was steadily growing hotter, from the heat of both his hand and the flame, but he couldn’t set it down yet. He eyed the liquid as it boiled, uncertain of whether it was thoroughly prepared or not and wondering if he had paid all that money for nothing. But it was the only chance he— _they_  had, and he had to take it.

After another five minutes of rotating the lighter beneath the spoon, Callaghan decided it was enough and flicked the instrument shut. Following the dealer’s instructions was simple enough—stir gently, pour carefully into the syringe, don’t shake it around—and soon he held a needle and syringe full of an average street dose of heroin.

He sincerely hoped that it wasn’t a waste.

Callaghan ducked beneath the plastic sheeting draped around the production area, deftly avoiding the rotating mechanical arms and machinery spitting out miniature robots. He made his way over to the cot in the corner and the still body covered in burns beneath the thin blankets. He stood over the young man for a moment, silent, considering. Which arm would hurt less as an injection site? After a few minutes of deliberation, Callaghan finally settled for the right arm, with its less damaged skin, and exchanged the needle and syringe momentarily for a strip of elastic.

Tadashi began to stir as Callaghan wrapped the elastic tightly about his arm, just above the elbow. The young man’s brow furrowed in pain, his skin burning with fever, and Callaghan’s paternal instinct struck him like a blow to the face. “Shhhh, it’s alright,” he soothed. “You’re okay. It’s just something for the pain.”

Callaghan picked the needle and syringe back up. Tadashi was beginning to groan and whimper, mumbling something largely unintelligible. “Just hold still,” Callaghan urged, pushing the needle into the vein at the crook of Tadashi’s elbow and pressed down on the pump. The heroin vanished into Tadashi’s bloodstream, and when it had finished, Callaghan quickly withdrew the needle and smoothed a band-aid over the injection site. It would be alright, he told himself, wiping the needle on a handkerchief as Tadashi relaxed, eyelids drooping. Everything would work itself out. He would finish off Krei soon, and then he could get help for Tadashi, and everything would work itself out.

From outside the production area, Callaghan could hear the scrape of shoes across dusty wooden floors and low voices exchanging words. He breathed in, sharp and nasal, and glanced at Tadashi. He could take care of it and be back within only a few minutes.

* * *

 

Hiro’s hands clenched in his pants until the skin of his knuckles strained white over the joints. He didn’t know what he had expected to find in the warehouse, but he certainly hadn’t expected… _that_. There were thousands and thousands—hundreds of thousands, maybe—of microbots filling dozens of waist-high plastic bins, spilling out of a cramped, tarped-off production zone. And behind it all, in possession of the neural transmitter, was a man dressed all in black with a kabuki mask to hide his face from view. It was something out of a Saturday morning cartoon, out of a comic book. It was surreal. It was Hiro’s crowning achievement, in the hands of a bona fide criminal.

Hiro’s brain spun with questions and half-solutions, a thousand scenarios tripping and colliding and bleeding together into the soft, brown eyes and devastating flames. How did that man get his microbots? How did he get the means to reproduce them? What was he planning with them?

“Hiro,” Baymax chirped, “my scans indicate that there are high levels of adrenaline and cortisol in your bloodstream and your heart rate is elevated. You appear to be distressed.”

“Not now, Baymax,” Hiro snapped. “We have to get to the police station.”

Hiro seriously doubted that the police could do much to help, but it was at least worth giving it the old college try. And it would make Aunt Cass happy to know that Hiro was reporting crimes instead of committing them.

* * *

 

Callaghan slumped against the wall of the warehouse, panting. His breath was hot and sticky against the inner side of the mask, creating a thin sheen of moisture against his nose and mouth.

And he had thought he was in over his head before.

Now, though, he had to worry about the boy. _Hiro._ He knew, Callaghan realized, dropping his head into his hands and fancying he could feel his heart sinking down into the pit of his stomach. Hiro saw the microbots with his own eyes, saw how they were made—and Callaghan’s panicked reaction had done little to defuse the situation. And like a fool, Callaghan had let him get away, had let him escape to presumably alert the authorities and bring his entire scheme crashing down on his head.

Oh, but what would he have done with Hiro if he’d caught him? He already had one troublesome Hamada son on his hands. And—

Oh. Oh, no, it simply would not do. If Hiro had seen Tadashi through the plastic sheeting…

Callaghan shook his head firmly. There was no way to guarantee he had, and even if he did see anything, the plastic would have obscured it enough that Hiro wouldn’t have known it was his brother. And in the extremely unlikely event that had Hiro _had_ seen Tadashi, the adrenaline rush of running from a masked man would surely be enough to make him forget the finer details.

It would resolve itself; there could be no other option. Callaghan would rain destruction on Krei’s exposition day, deliver Tadashi to the nearest emergency room, and go back to his wife and daughter. Hiro Hamada would not be an issue. He was certain of it.


End file.
